Declan
She doesn’t wake up when I carry her inside.
That bothers me, even when I know it shouldn’t.
She’s exhausted. Whatever happened to her tonight knocked her flat before we broke in.
She’s dead weight in my arms, her head against my shoulder, breathing shallow and off-rhythm.
Every instinct I’ve got is telling me something is wrong with this girl.
Something deeper than fear, something I can’t put my finger on.
It’s eating at me, and I can’t afford that… but I can’t stop it.
Zeke goes out of his way not to help. He’s inside the house before I pull Iris out of the car, probably in a hurry to get back to his mate, so there’s no chance to ask if he feels okay after the gas we inhaled. Since I’m feeling clear-headed, I’ll assume he is, too.
Cole holds the front door open. He doesn’t say a word, but I can feel him looking at me. The way I’m carrying her in both arms, cradling her with her head tucked under my chin.
I know how it looks. It’s not exactly how you carry someone you’ve just abducted. I don’t have it in me to care right now.
The house is quiet after three in the morning, Cole and Nora’s newborn–my nephew–sound asleep.
The stairs creak softly under my feet as I climb up into a darkened hallway.
I take her to the spare room at the end of the hall.
It’s small, with only a bed and a nightstand.
There’s a window overlooking the back of the property and the woods beyond, and a little bathroom attached. We barely use it.
I lay her down on the bed, and I’m more careful about it than I need to be. She lets out a soft grunt and stretches when her back hits the mattress, then goes still again.
I switch on the lamp next to the bed, and in the low light, she looks so young.
Long, blonde hair spreads across the pillow like a halo.
There are dark circles under her eyes, and her skin is pale enough that I can see the veins at her temples.
She’s in an oversized T-shirt and pajama shorts, and her feet are bare and dirty from the ground outside her house.
She looks like someone whose body is fighting a battle she didn’t sign up for.
And hanging over everything, there’s that scent.
It’s been stuck in my head since the truck went by on the road, and in this small room, it’s everywhere. Her, but not just her. There’s something underneath the normal human smell. Something that has no business being there. Not drugs. Not perfume. Something biological, almost like…
But no. She’s human. I know she is. Everything about her reads human. But there’s this other layer woven through it, faint and wrong, and my wolf won’t let it go. He’s locked onto it like nothing else matters.
I’m not getting answers tonight. Whatever Moore did to her at that facility—and he did something, that’s obvious—it ran her into the ground. Pushing her now would be a waste of time.
I find rope in the garage and grab a chair from the kitchen before returning to her. She doesn’t stir when I tie her left wrist to the headboard. It’s loose enough that it won’t dig in, but tight enough that she’s not slipping out. I check the knot once, twice. She sleeps through all of it.
Then I drop into the kitchen chair now sitting by the window. Might as well take the first shift, since no one else volunteered.
Not three minutes pass before I realize this is stupid.
There’s a list a mile long of things I should be doing right now.
Setting up a perimeter check, debriefing with Cole, calling Kyran after he and his bears returned to their territory.
Instead, I’m sitting in the dark watching a girl I don’t know breathe through a deep sleep.
Dad would’ve done this differently. He would’ve handled the logistics first, delegated the details, kept his head on straight. He sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here noticing things like the way her eyelashes look against her cheeks or how her breathing has finally started to even out.
But Dad’s not here. I am. And I can’t make myself get up.
What is it about her? I keep poking at it, turning it around, and nothing clicks. She’s Moore’s daughter. She was riding in that truck while her father drove to a building full of people he keeps in cages. She didn’t seem to have a problem with any of that. So she should be the enemy. Simple.
Except nothing about this feels simple, and the harder I try to make it seem that way, the more complicated it gets.
Hours pass. The house makes its usual noises around me—wood creaking, furnace kicking on, Cole’s footsteps downstairs, pacing with a fussy baby in his arms. At some point, Zeke’s door opens and shuts.
I hear him moving around in the kitchen.
He doesn’t come looking for me. I don’t want him to.
He needs to cool off first before one of us says something that will only complicate things more.
It’s just short of five o’clock when she starts to come around. Her breathing changes first, then her fingers flex against the quilt, and there’s a small, confused pull against the rope.
Her eyes open. She blinks at the ceiling for a while, then turns her head to take in the room, the nightstand, the window, me.
Her confused gaze lingers on me and slowly starts to focus until she’s more with it than before. Her eyes are clearer, sharper, though there’s still a fog around the edges. She looks up at her wrist. The rope. The headboard.
I watch as she puts it all together. There’s no shock. No gasp of surprise, no panicked tug against the rope.
There’s only one word. “Bathroom?” she whispers.
She doesn’t look like she’s scheming. She looks like a girl who needs to pee. But I’ve been surprised once tonight by the Moore family’s talent for having tricks up their sleeves, so I’m not taking chances.
I nod toward the bathroom door on the other side of the room. “Right there. I’m untying you, but the door stays open.”
She watches me undo the knot, rubbing her wrist when it comes free. Then she says something I don’t expect. “I’m not going to try anything.” No attitude, no edge. Flat, like she’s telling me what day it is. “My dad will figure this out. He’ll make it right. There’s no point in me trying to escape.”
I stare at her. She stares back. Then she stands—wobbly, catching herself on the nightstand—and walks to the bathroom using slow, careful steps.
I stay in the chair, angled so I can see the open doorway. Water runs. The toilet flushes. More water. She comes back out, walks past me, and sits back down on the bed with her hands folded in her lap.
That’s it. No looking for a weapon. No testing the window. She used the bathroom and came back because she honestly, genuinely believes her father is going to swoop in and sort this out.
I tie her wrist again, which she allows without the slightest resistance.
Is she for real? She’s been grabbed by shifters, who have plenty of reasons to hate her father and want to destroy everything he cares about. She’s not running. She’s not fighting. Not because she’s given up. I’ve seen people give up, and this isn’t that.
It’s faith, unshakable in Daddy.
While all I remember is Moore peeling out of that driveway. How his daughter was on the floor behind him, reaching for him, crying, and he didn’t slow down. He never looked back. She weighs next to nothing, and he could’ve carried her out of there. He didn’t.
Obviously, that’s not how she sees it. In her head, he left because he had to. Because it was part of the plan. Because he’s always got a plan.
I can’t figure out if her faith in him is impressive or the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Are you cold?” I ask, because she’s shivering, and the quilt has slid down to her waist.
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t argue, either. She’s still in that thin T-shirt and those pajama shorts, and this room has always been drafty. I go to my room, grab a flannel shirt and bring it back. “You can wear this.”
She looks at it, then at me before holding out her free hand to take it. I untie her wrist yet again so she can put it on and will my hands to keep from lingering too long against her bare skin.
She pulls the flannel on over her T-shirt, and the soft, worn fabric swallows her tiny body.
She’s way too thin. I could practically count her ribs under my fingers as I carried her.
Her collarbones jut out sharp enough to cast shadows, and there’s a bruise visible on the inside of her left elbow when she pushes up the sleeves.
Dark and intense against her pale skin. She buttons the flannel with clumsy fingers, and something in my chest turns over.
Something else happens, too. Lower. Physical. The kind of reaction I was not expecting and am not prepared for.
It throws me. That’s not how this works. Not for us. Wolves don’t react to just anyone. It’s not random, it’s not casual. It’s specific. It only happens when—
I kill the thought before it’s complete because, no. Giving it any of my already lagging energy would only make everything worse.
She looks up at me, and I realize she caught me staring. There’s something cautious in her expression, wary but curious, like she’s trying to work me out. “Was it you?” she asks.
“Was what me?”
“The other facility.” She pulls her knees up, my shirt covering them with flannel to spare. “The one that blew up. Was that you guys?”
I didn’t expect her to ask or even speak to me at all unless absolutely necessary. Instead, she’s coming at me with questions. Interesting.
I could lie, but what would be the point? “Yes.”
She takes that in. Not much changes on her face beyond a little tightness around her eyes, the way her lips press together. Then a nod, slow, like she’s filing it away.
I don’t know why it feels necessary to keep pushing, but I do. “The facility where your father kept my brother’s mate locked up for years and used her as a test subject.”
There it is. A flinch she can’t quite hide.
She looks away from me, staring over my shoulder out the window.
“All test subjects are there of their own free will.” The words come out smooth, rehearsed, like she’s reciting something she learned a long time ago and has never questioned since.
It sounds like her dad’s voice coming out of her mouth.
“Their own free will,” I repeat. Is she for real? A laugh rumbles in my chest, filled with disbelief. “Where in the hell did you get that idea?”
“The program has guidelines. Protocols. Nobody is forced to participate.” She lifts her chin. “I should know, because I’m also a test subject. I volunteered.”
I look at her. She looks back, and she means it. This isn’t a bluff or a deflection. She believes what she’s saying. She volunteered to let her father run experiments on her, and she thinks everyone else in those facilities did the same.
His own daughter. The man experiments on his own daughter.
“What’s he doing to you?” It comes out rougher than I mean it to. “The tests. Whatever he’s putting in you. What is it?”
Part of her wants to answer. I can feel it like a physical thing, this pull between us, a current running under the surface. She opens her mouth.
And then the wall goes back up.
“My father’s research is aimed at bridging the biological gap between humans and shifters.
” Flat, robotic. Rehearsed down to the pauses between the words.
“The potential applications in regenerative medicine could transform healthcare. Accelerated healing, enhanced immune response, cellular regeneration. This is about progress. Helping all of humanity.”
Every word is perfect. Every word is empty. She’s given this speech before, or she’s heard it so many times that it’s second nature now. It’s not her talking. It’s him.
I should be pissed. She’s in my house, wearing my shirt, tied to my bed, and she’s feeding me a goddamn brochure. She’s covering for the man who left her on the floor like she was nothing.
But I look at her—this skinny, shivering girl swimming in my flannel, with dark circles under her eyes and unshaking belief that her father is one of the good guys—and anger isn’t what I feel.
I’m worried about her. Under the mission and the instincts and whatever my wolf thinks he knows, I am worried about this girl who volunteered to let someone hurt her and genuinely believes she made a free choice.
Not only that, but that everybody else made their own free choice, like she did.
I tie her wrist back to the headboard, then pull the quilt up because she’s still shaking.
She watches me do it with an expression I can’t read.
It’s damn unnerving, like she’s trying to see inside my head.
She doesn’t want to do that. She doesn’t want to know what I’m thinking about her and her fucked-up father. “Get some sleep,” I grunt.
She turns toward the wall without another word. After a while, her breathing evens out, and some of the tension crackling in the air smooths out.
I sit back down. The sky outside the window is starting to fade to a pale gray. Morning is coming. I doubt dawn will bring any answers to the questions that keep piling up.
She volunteered. Why the hell would she volunteer for something like this?
That question follows me into the morning, and it doesn’t let go.